Design a Dropbox/Google Drive sync service
Company: Meta
Role: Software Engineer
Category: System Design
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Onsite
Design a file storage and sync service like Dropbox/Google Drive.
Requirements:
- Upload/download files and folders.
- Sync changes across multiple devices.
- Support versioning and conflict resolution.
- Support sharing via links or with specific users.
- Efficiently handle large files (chunking/dedup desirable).
Out of scope: complex collaborative editing (Google Docs).
Quick Answer: This question evaluates proficiency in designing distributed file storage and synchronization systems, including scalability, data consistency and synchronization models, versioning and conflict resolution, access control, and efficient handling of large files.